


the walls are alive, you know?

by LaPetiteReveuse



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Brakebills, Welters 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 18:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11064258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaPetiteReveuse/pseuds/LaPetiteReveuse
Summary: Brakebills was more than just a stage at which to perform. It was its own character playing a role it knew well.





	the walls are alive, you know?

The students came and went in a steady and constant pace. It was part of the clockwork that kept Brakebills in balance. They arrive, bright eyed and hopeful. They left in all manner of states at a variety of ages and proficiency depending on their time there. And though the grounds moved and flickered about, they remained the same aspects only in differing order. Though the grass were new, the soil was older than time itself.  

It ran on its own clockwork, the time unmatched to the outside world. Where the spring buds of the flowers became to sprout on the grounds of Brakebills, the real world plummeted into its winter. Its clockwork ensured those seasons maintained their magic. The snow always crisp, the summer always hot with a gentle breeze, the spring always brimming with expectance and the fall held colours so beautiful it was unmatched.

The students’ lives and movement of times were reflected within the house. In the works on the walls, the songs sung, the technology that made its way – gradually initially then sped up with exponential speed – into the house. The talk of people, new celebrities wandered the halls, and though the halls listened with great fascination it still maintained its traditional view. The brickwork showed its age. It remembered all the talk, all of the students, and all of the change from back when it had merely been a safe house. And yet it remained young. Constantly reflecting the lives of young adults, reeking of potential did that. It affected everything it touched. The house remained as young and full of potential as all of the students who passed through.

The school's life had begun further back than documentation showed. Having spring up simply from no where, it had initially been fallen upon by a group of young magicians who used the building and it's grounds to live away from the real world. Over the years more and more magicians were invited to marvel at the beauty of the grounds and its buildings. Magicians both young and old arrived from all over the globe to see if the rumours of a house brimming with magical ability could truly exist. But many pryed upong its magic. Tried to harness or control it. And thus measured had to be taken into place. The place moved onto a plain separate to the earth. Only access by those the building wished. The building was to decide it use. To decide who is was to let in. And so it decided students because only they it deemed worthy. Those who's only intension is to learn and be taught. Sure enough it was to realise the duality of a person. Though one may crave knowledge, there reason may not be pure. Yet it opened its doors once again. This time as a beacon of knowledge to magicians. Only able to be run by those who shared its intentions no other could be capable of running the place.

The spells were put up not long after the first Great Fire. Hundreds of protection charms placed upon the varying entrances and areas. Over the years they had diminished. Become old, become useless. But alas new ones would be put up again. A little slack in the recent years, but the building was able to forgive this as the recent years had been falsely reassuring.

It’s ran its own life, as the students did. Off on its own adventures causing as much havoc within the students as they caused it. Each time they cast a spell that caused the building to shudder with anticipation, it would retaliate by moving one of the fountains to the other side of the campus.

It breathed with the wind that brushed through its hallways. The rooms acting as it’s lungs that seemed to feel bigger with each breath. The rooms too that would move themselves around whenever it felt like it. Though the teachers would always label them in the same pattern the rooms themselves would alter. The phosphoromancy classroom, though remained on the south side of the main building now seemed to look more like the old second year common room, which now bore likeness to the cryomancy room. The teachers would often spend the vacations moving equipment across the school from one room to another to ensure the students education was not hindered. The school cared little. It was the constant victim to the students’ education. Singed curtains, broken stairs, scratches on the walls. Though it looked to be just a building each of the injuries was felt the same way it would if you or I were to have our clothes catch fire, out legs be kicked or our skin be carelessly slashed.

Many wondered why, if the school were to be injured so badly each year, it would remain. Surely a vessel able to move its rooms with no overlap, work on its own time frame, and have the ability to only make itself known to those when the time suited, why did it not just move realm completely. Become a stately home in Victorian England, become a museum in Rome, or even an abandoned house somewhere in the future. Because it brimmed with life, and this it saw is its purpose. Much like how a parent will put up with a tantrum when their own child cries, the house would mend to keep the life running through it. There was little life inside museums, or stately homes, or abandoned houses. It cared little for the students’ education, but its foundations rested on the students’ liveliness.


End file.
